Claudia Alarcón & Silät Argentina
Claudia Alarcón is an indigenous textile artist from the La Puntana community of Wichí people of northern Salta. Alongside her individual practice, she leads the Silät collective, an organisation of one hundred women weavers of different generations from the Alto la Sierra and La Puntana Wichí communities.
Wichí society is clan-based and matrilocal. Weaving with hand-spun vegetal fibres from the local chaguar plant has been a communal, female-led activity for centuries, and is fundamental to the visual culture, narrative history and economics of the Wichí people. Its centrality is articulated in a mythological tale, in which beautiful women, living in the sky as stars, would travel down to earth on woven chaguar ropes to dine on the fish caught by fishermen. Upon discovering this, the men employed the help of birds to snap the ropes and the women were trapped on earth for evermore, but continued to weave and pass the knowledge from the world above onto their daughters. The parable suggests a passage from the naivety and freedom of childhood to the societal responsibilities of adulthood; girls are taught to spin chaguar and weave functional objects from the age of 12, their creations a way to provide financially as well as to sustain ancestral cultural practices. In another sense, learning to weave presents a further awakening, an entryway into a collective conversation between the women of the Wichí communities; the textiles, formed of geometric motifs drawn from the surrounding environment, are a method of communicating unspoken thoughts within a culture that values highly forms of non-verbal expression, and the messages found within dreams and subconscious intuition. Silät, the name adopted by the artist collective, means ‘information’ or ‘alert,’ and reflects the role of their textiles to convey messages and a shared cultural sentiment.
The Silät collective emerged from the Thañí/Viene del monte organization, a wider public project aimed at reviving ancestral textile traditions across the Salta region. Coordinated by Alarcón and working closely with curator Andrei Fernández since 2015, Silät explore the possibilities of artmaking within and beyond these traditions. The collective have evolved established techniques into new forms, producing large-scale images that exploit the textural intricacies and earthy colours of chaguar yarn and natural dyes. In coordinating the production of the Silät collective, and leading experimentations in material and subject matter within their practice, Alarcón supports creativity, independence and self-sustaining practices, and provides a means for women across generations to transmit a contemporary indigenous culture into the webs of international art dialogues, beyond ethnographic readings.
Claudia Alarcón & Silät’s work was featured in the 60th International Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, Stranieri Ovunque – Foreigners Everywhere in 2024. In December 2022, Alarcón became the first indigenous woman to be awarded a National Salon of Visual Arts prize by the Ministry of Culture in Argentina. Alarcón was also awarded the Ama Amoedo Acquisition Prize at Pinta Miami in 2022, and her work is represented in Museu de arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP), MALBA Collection in Buenos Aires, the Denver Art Museum, Colorado, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota.
Learn more about Claudia Alarcón & Silät's participation in the Venice Biennale
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The Armory Show
Claudia Alarcón & Silät | Anni Albers 5 - 8 Sep 2024Cecilia Brunson Projects is pleased to share a dual presentation by the textile collective Claudia Alarcón & Silät (founded 2023) and the Bauhaus weaver and printmaker Anni Albers (1899-1994) at...Read more -
Hecho a Mano
Group exhibition 22 Feb - 22 Mar 2024Bringing together both Latin American artists from the Modernist period as well as artists working in the present day, Hecho a Mano is a contemporary response to the tradition of...Read more -
Claudia Alarcón and Silät
Nitsäyphä: Wichí Stories 5 Oct - 3 Nov 2023Cecilia Brunson Projects is delighted to present an exhibition of textile art by Claudia Alarcón and Silät, a collective of artists from the Wichí communities of Santa Victoria Este, Salta,...Read more
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The Best Booths at the Armory Show, From Hybrid Selves to Beautiful Body Horror
Alex Greenberger, ARTnews, September 7, 2024 -
The Coming of World Art at the Venice Biennale
Barry Schwabsky, The Nation, September 4, 2024 -
In Conversation with Claudia Alarcón
Alena Dower, émergent magazine, August 19, 2024
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MALBA Puertos inaugural exhibition
Claudia Alarcón & Silät September 22, 2024Three new textiles by Claudia Alarcón & Silät are on display at the new MALBA Puertos museum in Escobar, Buenos Aires. The exhibition La vida...Read more -
Museum acquisition
Claudia Alarcón & Silät's work acquired by MASP September 9, 2024We are delighted to announce that Claudia Alarcón & Silät's textile work Chelchup [El otoño / Autumn] has been acquired by the Museu de Arte...Read more -
The Armory Show
New York, 5 - 8 September 2024 September 5, 2024At the Armory Show, Cecilia Brunson Projects is pleased to share a dual presentation by the Wichí textile collective Claudia Alarcón & Silät (founded 2023)...Read more -
Announcement
Claudia Alarcón & Silät at La Biennale di Venezia January 31, 2024We are delighted to share the news that Claudia Alarcón & Silät have been invited to participate in the 60th International Art Exhibition of La...Read more -
Event
Frieze Week Brunch with Sofia Gotti October 13, 2023We welcome you to the gallery for our Frieze Week Brunch, on Friday 13 October, 11am-1pm. Address: Cecilia Brunson Projects End of Royal Oak Yard,...Read more